You are here

Trending

Li Gang

Nanfang Media group chairman Yang Jian will arrive in Hong Kong this month to fill the vacancy left by central government liaison office deputy director Li Gang, who is expected to become director of the liaison office in Macau.

Public discussion remains intense on the high-profile incident involving 17-year-old Li Guanfeng, who was detained with four others by police in Beijing last month for allegedly taking part in a gang rape. Li does not come from an ordinary family: his father is Li Shuangjiang, a senior military official famous for singing patriotic songs.

Three years ago, a Sichuan peasant named Li Gang set up an iron skillet and a few tables at an old residential block in Chengdu and started cooking deep-fried dough sticks - one of the most common breakfast foods for Chinese.

The day after Hong Kong's worst ferry collision in four decades, the top story on China's primetime state television news, CCTV's 7pm Xinwen Lianbo, caught the eye of many in the city. It was about the Lamma ferry tragedy in which 39 people died.

It is extremely unfortunate that a marine tragedy that cost 39 lives has provided the cause for another row between Hong Kong and the mainland.

It is true, as Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying said in his National Day address, that it is "essential for Hong Kong to develop alongside the mainland" and so confrontation is not in anyone's interests.

Although a commission of inquiry is to investigate the causes of the Lamma ferry disaster in which at least 38 people died and scores were injured, police have so far arrested seven crew members, including the two captains. We may see more arrests as the facts begin to emerge.

The mainland authorities' response to the accident, including the deployment of salvage ships, has raised questions, given that the government showed it was more than capable of handling the disaster on its own.

Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying, in particular, was criticised for allowing a senior figure from the central government's liaison office to play a key role.

Thursday's pledge by the Hunan government to order a fresh inquiry into the suspicious death of Tiananmen dissident Li Wangyang was largely prompted by an urgent need to cool down the public outcry in Hong Kong only weeks before President Hu Jintao visits the city, say analysts and activists.